"I'm going to leave the sword and stuff here," said Eric, removing most of his accoutrements to reveal a slim, dark-haired young man whose face would be a lot better when his acne cleared up. "If you touch them, terrible things will befall."

"Wouldn't dream of it," said Rincewind.

When he was left alone he wandered he wandered over to the lectern and looked at the book. The title, in impressively flickering red letters, was Mallificarum Sumpta Diabolicite Occularis Singularum, the Book of Ultimate Control. He knew about it. There was a copy in the Library somewhere, although wizards never bothered with it.

This might seem odd, because if there is one thing a wizard would trade his grandfather for, it is power. But it wasn't all that strange, because any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.

Even wizards thought demonologists were odd; they tended to be surreptitious, pale men who got up to complicated things in darkened rooms and had damp, weak handshakes. It wasn't like good clean magic. No self-respecting wizard would have any truck with the demonic regions, whose inhabitants were as big a collection of ding-dong as you'd find outside a large belfry.

He inspected the skeleton closely, just in case. It didn't seem inclined to make a contribution to the situation.

"It belonged to his wossname, grandfather," said a cracked voice behind him

"Bit of an unusual bequest," said Rincewind.

"Oh, not personally. He got it in a shop somewhere. It's one of them wossname, articulate wossnames."

"It's not saying much right now," said Rincewind, and then went very quiet and thoughtful.

"Er," he said, without moving his head, "what, precisely, am I talking to?"